Synchronicity surrounding schizoprenia/mystical/psychedelic/religious experiences.

[pitcher10]

I have considered myself a skeptic for a while, (not a very good one though.) Recently I found out about the phenomenon of "synchronicity," and so far I haven't found a rational explanation for it's occurrence. "Littlewood's law" and "the law of truly large numbers" do explain it pretty well for the most part.

Here's my problem: why do these events almost always surround a state of either a mystical/spiritual/religious experience, schizophrenic episode, psychedelic episode. There's got to be something to them occurring more frequently during, or surrounding a time when your brain was not working normally right? But these events do seem to happen objectively, and aren't merely a faulty memory or hallucination, since many anecdotes state others noticing the phenomenon too.

I realize that anecdotal evidence is the worst form of evidence, and that no one should believe anything based on anecdotes. But there are so many of those stories that I doubt they're all making stuff up.

 

[Nay_Sayer]

The new mystics/spiritualist etc always borrow from the older stories, You don't wanna be the one person left out would you.


It's nothing special really, It happens in religion too, When it comes to stories about incredible impossible things happening, for me, It's about quality not quantity.

 

[Kid Eager]

Could it be because absent those factors you mentioned, normal people would, if noticing it, say "ha... what a coincidence!" and leave it at that?

 

[marplots]

I have considered myself a skeptic for a while, (not a very good one though.) Recently I found out about the phenomenon of "synchronicity," and so far I haven't found a rational explanation for it's occurrence. "Littlewood's law" and "the law of truly large numbers" do explain it pretty well for the most part.

That's what I thought was the case too.

Here's my problem: why do these events almost always surround a state of either a mystical/spiritual/religious experience, schizophrenic episode, psychedelic episode.

This is new to me. Are you saying that these "meaningful coincidences" preferentially happen to those with altered/abnormal brain states? If they do, then one immediate question would be whether the events happen more often or are merely noticed more often in this crowd. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that schizophrenics are better able to extract patterns they find meaningful from the world around them.

The tough thing would be to get some objective measure that didn't include the pool of people who are better at measuring. In other words, our instrument for detecting synchronicity is human brains, so you'd need a kind of "standard brain" to tell you whether or not some event was a good example, and use that, despite what the psychotic person reports.

Alternatively, you could have a good detector (someone with a psychosis) observe a "normal" person and point out synchronicity the normal person has missed.

Both of these have the advantage of a standardized rule, but there's another problem. I experience synchronicity by finding meaning relative to me. A lot of it happens in my head. If I see a woman who looks "just like mom" in the mall, only to find out mom has died in her bed, I am relying on making a personal connection to the event an outside observer might not be able to observe at all.

And the final problem is setting up a repeatable test. You could test the pattern matching part between the mentally ill and the norms by creating synchronicity-style events "in the lab," but that wouldn't tell you how often notable events happen in the wild.

If I had to guess, I'd suspect someone has already studied pattern matching (which is just pattern creation, in a sense) in different diagnoses of mental illness. You might look at how the Rorschach test is used as a start.

I hope I've explained the difficulties in testing. Even though you can say, post event, that something should count as synchronicity, you can't be sure you are seeing all the events that might qualify. I can only report the three license plates I saw (the ones with the winning lotto numbers) if I notice them. How am I to measure synchronicity that passes by unnoticed?

(I also left out confabulation, delusion and frank hallucination as factors which might taint reporting, especially for some types of mental illness.)

 

[Resume]

Sting, is that you?

 

[pitcher10]

That's what I thought was the case too.



This is new to me. Are you saying that these "meaningful coincidences" preferentially happen to those with altered/abnormal brain states? If they do, then one immediate question would be whether the events happen more often or are merely noticed more often in this crowd. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that schizophrenics are better able to extract patterns they find meaningful from the world around them.

The tough thing would be to get some objective measure that didn't include the pool of people who are better at measuring. In other words, our instrument for detecting synchronicity is human brains, so you'd need a kind of "standard brain" to tell you whether or not some event was a good example, and use that, despite what the psychotic person reports.

Alternatively, you could have a good detector (someone with a psychosis) observe a "normal" person and point out synchronicity the normal person has missed.

Both of these have the advantage of a standardized rule, but there's another problem. I experience synchronicity by finding meaning relative to me. A lot of it happens in my head. If I see a woman who looks "just like mom" in the mall, only to find out mom has died in her bed, I am relying on making a personal connection to the event an outside observer might not be able to observe at all.

And the final problem is setting up a repeatable test. You could test the pattern matching part between the mentally ill and the norms by creating synchronicity-style events "in the lab," but that wouldn't tell you how often notable events happen in the wild.

If I had to guess, I'd suspect someone has already studied pattern matching (which is just pattern creation, in a sense) in different diagnoses of mental illness. You might look at how the Rorschach test is used as a start.

I hope I've explained the difficulties in testing. Even though you can say, post event, that something should count as synchronicity, you can't be sure you are seeing all the events that might qualify. I can only report the three license plates I saw (the ones with the winning lotto numbers) if I notice them. How am I to measure synchronicity that passes by unnoticed?

(I also left out confabulation, delusion and frank hallucination as factors which might taint reporting, especially for some types of mental illness.)

Yeah people with abnormal brain states usually do seem to have more "meaningful coincidences" happen to them. But like you pointed out, I'm not sure if it's actually happening more often or if they're just picking out the patterns. I honestly can't remember a single "meaningful coincidence" happening to me off the top of my head. But many of these people claim to have dozens of these events happen to them daily.

I don't know, does their subconscious somehow make them aware of these events? That's a possibility I've pondered, which doesn't seem too unlikely. Maybe there are dozens of these meaningful coincidences going on in my life too, but my subconscious filters them out.

 

[pitcher10]

Sting, is that you?

No idea who or what sting is, so I'm guessing no?

 

[marplots]

Yeah people with abnormal brain states usually do seem to have more "meaningful coincidences" happen to them. But like you pointed out, I'm not sure if it's actually happening more often or if they're just picking out the patterns. I honestly can't remember a single "meaningful coincidence" happening to me off the top of my head. But many of these people claim to have dozens of these events happen to them daily.

I don't know, does their subconscious somehow make them aware of these events? That's a possibility I've pondered, which doesn't seem too unlikely. Maybe there are dozens of these meaningful coincidences going on in my life too, but my subconscious filters them out.

"Meaningful" is very tricky.

 

[Resume]

No idea who or what sting is, so I'm guessing no?

The Police - Synchronicity 1

 

[marplots]

The Police - Synchronicity 1

You know, I was just thinking of that music but couldn't remember the name.

 

[Apathia]

I've noticed that people who take up "The Secret" and similar New Age you can have it all notions will initially report that they've had a flood of fantastic things happen since they followed The Secret. But then as time goes on, craptastic things happen as well, and eventually they realize the that in their initial period of beliefs, they were simply noting more things to be grateful about than they had before. Nothing changed for the better, really, just seeing the things to be grateful for that were always happening.

 

[Pope130]

You can add to the list: conspiracy theorists. They see meaningful patterns in any coincidence.

 

[Joey McGee]

problem: why do these events almost always surround a state of either a mystical/spiritual/religious experience, schizophrenic episode, psychedelic episode. There's got to be something to them occurring more frequently during, or surrounding a time when your brain was not working normally right? But these events do seem to happen objectively, and aren't merely a faulty memory or hallucination, since many anecdotes state others noticing the phenomenon too.

So here you are tying in the obvious mental illness aspect to the idea that others are noticing them too. ****. Have you noticed that people who are mentally ill tend to reject rationalist friends and tend to end up hanging around fellow new agers? New agers are very agreeable, they'll say oh I noticed that too! When what they mean is that it's remotely possible that one could interpret actual physical events in this way, this is not evidence that those events actually happened or that a rational person would have perceived them that way. A better way to get at this is... why are you encouraging people to believe what their mental problems are causing to believe? Do you think you're helping them by placing value on their experiences? If they were true experiences, why hasn't science discovered them after generations of "psychic researchers" devoting their lives to proving they are real? Stop enabling people with mental problems.

 

[Pixel42]

Could it be because absent those factors you mentioned, normal people would, if noticing it, say "ha... what a coincidence!" and leave it at that?

I'm pretty sure that's it. Our brains only bring a fraction of what goes on around us to the attention of our conscious awareness. They're constantly picking out from the flood of information going into the senses the stuff that's important, and filtering out the noise. We know they're primed to seek out patterns, to the point where they are more likely to see patterns that aren't there than to miss patterns that are, but they're still quite good at excluding noise. Perhaps the threshold at which an apparent pattern exceeds "must be meaningful" and is consciously registered is just lower than average in people with certain mental issues, or even just an inclination towards magical thinking.

 

[blutoski]

"Meaningful" is very tricky.

Particularly with mental illness. Ideations of reference abound.

Patient the other day: "I turned on the TV and the 15th person I saw on the screen used the word 'Autumn' AND had a blouse with buttons - don't tell me that's just a coincidence."

 

[marplots]

Particularly with mental illness. Ideations of reference abound.

Patient the other day: "I turned on the TV and the 15th person I saw on the screen used the word 'Autumn' AND had a blouse with buttons - don't tell me that's just a coincidence."

Wow. Makes you wonder what wouldn't count.

Take any two random nouns and ask someone how they relate to each other. My guess is you'll get an answer. This tells me we impose meaning as much as recognize it. I think the real trick is related to being a skeptic - reject meaning as the default. Until you can't.

 

[blutoski]

Wow. Makes you wonder what wouldn't count.

Take any two random nouns and ask someone how they relate to each other. My guess is you'll get an answer. This tells me we impose meaning as much as recognize it. I think the real trick is related to being a skeptic - reject meaning as the default. Until you can't.

The connection between two events can even be very tenuous in reality... but usually mentally healthy can explain it. Think of all those Columbo clues.

Columbo: "I'm afraid we know you did it Mr. Murderer. You have yellow mustard on your tie."

Murderer: "You're nuts."

Columbo: "Well, you see, sir... your alibi says that you never miss a Cubs game that you were at that Cubs game all afternoon; your proof was the mustard stain, which everybody saw you spill on yourself on the Jumbotron. But you see, my wife - Missus Columbo - now she's a Cubs fan too. Oh, see, is she ever. And so I know a little about Cubs games. You see, the concessions serve yellow and brown mustard, and sir, I gotta tell ya, no Cubs fan would be caught dead with yellow mustard. So how did you get that yellow mustard stain on your tie at the game, if you bought the hot dog at the concession? I had my people look at your video equipment, and I thought - well, we know now, see - I thought that maybe you had filmed it at home and broadcast the signal to the Jumbotron. In which case, the mustard came from (opens fridge) this bottle. My lab guys confirmed it, you see. Isn't that what actually happened sir? Do ya wanna make it easier on yourself and just confess?"


Compare against ideations of reference:

Patient: "When Anne Murray sings the lyrics to Snowbird, they're a secret message intended explicitly for me saying she is my actual wife. I know this because Wednesday I smelled cotton in the afternoon."

 

[pitcher10]

Marplots, when exactly would the line of "reject meaning as the default" be crossed. Seems pretty arbitrary, no?

 

[marplots]

Marplots, when exactly would the line of "reject meaning as the default" be crossed. Seems pretty arbitrary, no?

Yep. In my experience, we develop a set of tools we trust in an attempt to prevent injecting too much or over-relying on our pattern forming abilities. This doesn't mean I don't still respond instinctually, it's just that a second step, an evaluation step using those tools, quickly follows. This mechanism becomes habitual and I think, leads to the correct perception of skeptics leaning far toward the cynical side of the spectrum.

Some of those tools would be:
* trying to spot a bias (I have many I am aware of)
* trying to see what consequences would flow from the purported meaning and whether those things are there
* trying to see if there is an alternate approach or perspective to see from and if the view is the same
* trying to find challenges from others

Those are just off the top of my head and I'm sure there is a better list of skeptical tools available. But even so, I know I can still make mistakes and that I am an imperfect instrument when it comes to measuring meaning. By golly, that rock on Mars does look like a wrench, and those lights flitting around in the sky on that video do seem to be acting in ways human technology cannot duplicate.

In the end, I pretty much accept it as something my mind does, unbidden. As amazing as how easily I recognize all the words on this page. Pretty cool, but not automatically significant. Separating out the significance as a second step seems to me to be the best option.

 

[theprestige]

Maybe there are dozens of these meaningful coincidences going on in my life too, but my subconscious filters them out.

The coincidences are meaningless. Your brain filters them out because they are meaningless. When a healthy brain notices them, it might be the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

When a brain assigns meaning to them, it's a sign that the brain is unhealthy.

pitcher10, do you find yourself assigning meaning to lots of coincidences lately?